LETTER VIII.
January 3, 1788.
Dear sir,
Before I proceed to examine the objections, I beg leave to add a valuable
idea respecting representation, to be collected from De Lo[l]me, and other
able writers, which essentially tends to confirm my positions: They very
justly impute the establishment of general and equal liberty in England to a
balance of interests and powers among the different orders of men; aided by
a series of fortunate events, that never before, and possibly never again
will happen.
Before the Norman conquest the people of England enjoyed much of this
liberty. The first of the Norman kings, aided by foreign mercenaries and
foreign attendants, obnoxious to the English, immediately laid arbitrary
taxes, and established arbitrary courts, and severely oppress[ed] all orders
of people: The barons and people, who recollected their former liberties,
were induced, by those oppressions, to unite their efforts in their common
defence: Here it became necessary for the great men, instead of deceiving
and depressing the people, to enlighten and court them; the royal power was
too strongly fixed to be annihilated, and rational means were, therefore
directed to limiting it within proper bounds. In this long and arduous task,
in this new species of contests, the barons and people succeeded, because
they had been freemen, and knew the value of the object they were contending
for; because they were the people of a small island — one people who found
it practicable to meet and deliberate in one assembly, and act under one
system of resolves, and who were not obliged to meet in different provincial
assemblies, as is the case in large countries, as was the case in France,
Spain, &c. where their determinations were inconsistent with each other, and
where the king could play off one assembly against another.
It was in this united situation the people of England were for several
centuries, enabled to combine their exertions, and by compacts, as Magna
Charta, a bill of rights, &c. were able to limit, by degrees, the royal
prerogatives, and establish their own liberties. The first combination was,
probably, the accidental effect of pre-existing circumstances; but there was
an admirable balance of interests in it, which has been the parent of
English liberty, and excellent regulations enjoyed since that time. The
executive power having been uniformly in the king, and he the visible head
of the nation, it was chimerical for the greatest lord or most popular
leader, consistent with the state of the government, and opinion of the
people, to seriously think of becoming the king's rival, or to aim at even a
share of the executive power; the greatest subject's prospect was only in
acquiring a respectable influence in the house of commons, house of lords,
or in the ministry; circumstances at once made it the interests of the
leaders of the people to stand by them. Far otherwise was it with the ephori
in Sparta, and tribunes in Rome. The leaders in England have led the people
to freedom, in almost all other countries to servitude. The people in
England have made use of deliberate exertions, their safest and most
efficient weapons. In other countries they have often acted like mobs, and
been enslaved by their enemies, or by their own leaders. In England, the
people have been led uniformly, and systematically by their representatives
to secure their rights by compact, and to abolish innovations upon the
government: they successively obtained Magna Charta, the powers of taxation,
the power to propose laws, the habeas corpus act, bill of rights, &c. they,
in short, secured general and equal liberty, security to their persons and
property; and, as an everlasting security and bulwark of their liberties,
they fixed the democratic branch in the legislature, and jury trial in the
execution of the laws, the freedom of the press, &c.
In Rome, and most other countries, the reverse of all this is true. In
Greece, Rome, and wherever the civil law has been adopted, torture has been
admitted. In Rome the people were subject to arbitrary confiscations, and
even their lives would be arbitrarily disposed of by consuls, tribunes,
dictators, masters, &c. half of the inhabitants were slaves, and the other
half never knew what equal liberty was; yet in England the people have had
king, lords, and commons; in Rome they had consuls, senators and tribunes:
why then was the government of England so mild and favourable to the body of
the people, and that of Rome an ambitious and oppressive aristocracy? Why in
England have the revolutions always ended in stipulations in favour of
general liberty, equal laws, and the common rights of the people, and in
most other countries in favour only of a few influential men? The reasons,
in my mind, are obvious: In England the people have been substantially
represented in many respects; in the other countries it has not been so.
Perhaps a small degree of attention to a few simple facts will illustrate
this. — In England, from the oppressions of the Norman kings to the
revolution in 1688, during which period of two or three hundred years, the
English liberties were ascertained and established, the aristocratic part of
that nation was substantially represented by a very large number of nobles,
possessing similar interests and feelings with those they represented. The
body of the people, about four or five millions, then mostly a frugal landed
people, were represented by about five hundred representatives, taken not
from the order of men which formed the aristocracy, but from the body of the
people, and possessed of the same interests and feelings. De Lo[l]me,
speaking of the British representation, expressly founds all his reasons on
this union; this similitude of interests, feelings, views and circumstances.
He observes, the English have preserved their liberties, because they and
their leaders or representatives have been strictly united in interests, and
in contending for general liberty. Here we see a genuine balance founded in
the actual state of things. The whole community, probably, not more than
two-fifths more numerous than we now are, were represented by seven or eight
hundred men; the barons stipulated with the common people, and the king with
the whole. Had the legal distinction between lords and commons been broken
down, and the people of that island been called upon to elect forty-five
senators, and one hundred and twenty representatives, about the proportion
we propose to establish, their whole legislature evidently would have been
of the natural aristocracy, and the body of the people would not have had
scarcely a single sincere advocate; their interests would have been
neglected, general and equal liberty forgot, and the balance lost; contests
and conciliations, as in most other countries, would have been merely among
the few, and as it might have been necessary to serve their purposes, the
people at large would have been flattered or threatened, and probably not a
single stipulation made in their favour.
In Rome the people were miserable, though they had three orders, the
consuls, senators and tribunes, and approved the laws, and all for want of a
genuine representation. The people were too numerous to assemble, and do any
thing properly themselves; the voice of a few, the dupes of artifice, was
called the voice of the people. It is difficult for the people to defend
themselves against the arts and intrigues of the great, but by selecting a
suitable number of men fixed to their interests to represent them, and to
oppose ministers and senators. And the people's all depends on the number of
the men selected, and the manner of doing it. To be convinced of this, we
need only attend to the reason of the case, the conduct of the British
commons, and of the Roman tribunes: equal liberty prevails in England,
because there was a representation of the people, in fact and reality, to
establish it; equal liberty never prevailed in Rome, because there was but
the shadow of a representation. There were consuls in Rome annually elected
to execute the laws, several hundred senators represented the great
families; the body of the people annually chose tribunes from among
themselves to defend them and to secure their rights; I think the number of
tribunes annually chosen never exceeded ten. This representation, perhaps,
was not proportionally so numerous as the representation proposed in the new
plan; but the difference will not appear to be so great, when it shall be
recollected, that these tribunes were chosen annually; that the great
patrician families were not admitted to these offices of tribunes, and that
the people of Italy who elected the tribunes were a long while, if not
always, a small people compared with the people of the United States. What
was the consequence of this triffling representation? The people of Rome
always elected for their tribunes men conspicuous for their riches, military
commands, professional popularity, &c. great commoners, between whom and the
noble families there was only the shadowy difference of legal distinction.
Among all the tribunes the people chose for several centuries, they had
scarcely five real friends to their interests. These tribunes lived, felt
and saw, not like the people, but like the great patrician families, like
senators and great officers of state, to get into which it was evident, by
their conduct, was their sole object. These tribunes often talked about the
rights and prerogatives of the people, and that was all; for they never even
attempted to establish equal liberty: so far from establishing the rights of
the people, they suffered the senate, to the exclusion of the people, to
engross the powers of taxation; those excellent and almost only real weapons
of defence even the people of England possess. The tribunes obtained that
the people should be eligible to some of the great offices of state, and
marry, if they pleased, into the noble families; these were advantages in
their nature, confined to a few elevated commoners, and of triffling
importance to the people at large. Nearly the same observations may be made
as to the ephori of Sparta.
We may amuse ourselves with names; but the fact is, men will be governed by
the motives and temptations that surround their situation. Political evils
to be guarded against are in the human character, and not in the name of
patrician or plebian. Had the people of Italy, in the early period of the
republic, selected yearly, or biennially, four or five hundred of their best
informed men, emphatically from among themselves, these representatives
would have formed an honest respectable assembly, capable of combining in
them the views and exertions of the people, and their respectability would
have procured them honest and able leaders, and we should have seen equal
liberty established. True liberty stands in need of a fostering hand; from
the days of Adam she has found but one temple to dwell in securely; she has
laid the foundation of one, perhaps her last, in America; whether this is to
be compleated and have duration, is yet a question. Equal liberty never yet
found many advocates among the great: it is a disagreeable truth, that power
perverts mens views in a greater degree, than public employments inform
their understandings — they become hardened in certain maxims, and more lost
to fellow feelings. Men may always be too cautious to commit alarming and
glaring iniquities: but they, as well as systems, are liable to be corrupted
by slow degrees. Junius well observes, we are not only to guard against what
men will do, but even against what they may do. Men in high public offices
are in stations where they gradually lose sight of the people, and do not
often think of attending to them, except when necessary to answer private
purposes.
The body of the people must have this true representative security placed
some where in the nation; and in the United States, or in any extended
empire, I am fully persuaded can be placed no where, but in the forms of a
federal republic, where we can divide and place it in several state or
district legislatures, giving the people in these the means of opposing
heavy internal taxes and oppressive measures in the proper stages. A great
empire contains the amities and animosities of a world within itself. We are
not like the people of England, one people compactly settled on a small
island, with a great city filled with frugal merchants, serving as a common
centre of liberty and union: we are dispersed, and it is impracticable for
any but the few to assemble in one place: the few must be watched, checked,
and often resisted — tyranny has ever shewn a prediliction to be in close
amity with them, or the one man. Drive it from kings and it flies to
senators, to dicemvirs, to dictators, to tribunes, to popular leaders, to
military chiefs, &c.
De Lo[l]me well observes, that in societies, laws which were to be equal to
all are soon warped to the private interests of the administrators, and made
to defend the usurpations of a few. The English, who had tasted the sweets
of equal laws, were aware of this, and though they restored their king, they
carefully delegated to parliament the advocates of freedom.
I have often lately heard it observed, that it will do very well for a
people to make a constitution, and ordain, that at stated periods they will
chuse, in a certain manner, a first magistrate, a given number of senators
and representatives, and let them have all power to do as they please. This
doctrine, however it may do for a small republic, as Connecticut, for
instance, where the people may chuse so many senators and representatives to
assemble in the legislature, in an eminent degree, the interests, the views,
feelings, and genuine sentiments of the people themselves, can never be
admitted in an extensive country; and when this power is lodged in the hands
of a few, not to limit the few, is but one step short of giving absolute
power to one man — in a numerous representation the abuse of power is a
common injury, and has no temptation — among the few, the abuse of power may
often operate to the private emolument of those who abuse it.